Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

SECTION 1 - HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life

((Jim Steinman wrote it, I think, even though the site where I found the lyrics says it's Bonnie Tyler) - Bonnie Tyler




Chapter 1.12
Sunday, May 26th, 2002


Spike lounged on one of the red sofas that he'd dragged toward the centre of the reception area and blew the smoke from his cigarette in the direction of the grey demon, watching entranced as the energy barrier surrounding Skip made the tendrils curl away several feet before they reached him. Rogue sat on the floor next to him so that her head rested by his side, just at the right height for him to scratch behind her ears whenever he didn't consciously stop himself.

"Would you stop doing that?" Angel protested in an irritated way. "In fact, if you're going to smoke, go outside."

"Why? There isn't a mystical barrier or two out there to bounce the stuff off. It's way more fun in here. Call it an experiment."

Skip, meanwhile, tested the bounds of his inner prison, a cylinder of force marked out by a circle of red sand on the hotel floor. "Sand of the Red Palm. A child's trick."

"Maybe so," Wes coolly conceded. "Nevertheless, it has proved more than sufficient to keep you incapacitated until we were able to arrange something rather more permanent."

"And what might that be?"

"You seem to think you're so superior, I'm sure you'll work it out... In time."

Angel strolled over toward his antagonist. "...If you had any. You see, Wes and Fred here just happen to have a few little spells up their collective sleeves. How about we start with that one you found, Fred?"

"Sphere of the Infinite Agonies. Every second, a lifetime... and Wes just happens to have everything all laid out and ready for the invocation."

"Hey, whoa, I'm-." The demon seemed to cough. A spatter of slime green blood hit the 'cylinder' walls and began to run down. "I'm-." Again, the demon coughed and spluttered, gasping for breath as he spat gobbets of what passed for blood. "What the hell?"

Spike smirked. "Who knew the bit about 'Let his deceitful tongue be cut out' was quite so literal? Though not literal enough to make it actually drop off, 'cause then you wouldn't be much use to us, but it sure as hell feels like it, doesn't it? Truth spell, chump. We don't just want you to talk. We want to know the truth. Now, unless you want Boy Watcher here to start invoking, I suggest you rephrase whatever you were about to say."

"But first what was it that you were going to say?" Buffy interrupted from her perch atop the reception desk.

"I don't think that would be in my best-." A panicked look came over the demon's face as Wes began to chant. "Look, I was going to say 'I'm just a merc'... Just quit with the hocus pocus. I don't care how this turns out. I'm only in it for the money."

Wes replaced the sheet of paper he had been using for a bookmark and closed the volume from which he had been reading.

Skip rapidly continued. "Whatever you want to know... Look, I go where the deal is, and not being in one of them things... bargain."

"So what makes the statement 'I'm just a merc' less than the truth?" Buffy probed.

"Because I'm not just a merc. I'm an exceptional merc." Skip looked over at Spike's cigarette. "You haven't got a spare one of those, have you?"

"Several, but they're all stayin' on this side of those barriers, monochrome."

"What did you do to Cordelia?" Angel's impatience showed in his every move and in every inflection of his voice.

"It was just a Jacob's Ladder. I ain't responsible for whatever happens at the other end."

"And what does happen at the other end?" Wesley's coolness made a perfect counterpoint to Angel's anger.

Skip obviously hesitated.

Spike sat up and swung his feet to the floor before rising. "That spell they've got rigged up really isn't one you want to be messin' with. See, if we get it goin', by the time we argue about how long to leave it running before we check to see if you're ready to talk..." Before he continued Spike let the demon imagine the eons of torture he could go through while the group bickered over how long to leave him in his own hell. "So just face facts, unless you're expecting some sort of miracle, you better just answer everything we ask, when we ask."

"It's some kind of possession deal. The one I'm working for needs a body so she can come to earth."

"And what happens to Cordy while this 'one' uses her body?" Angel asked.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?" the elder vamp seemed to be on a roll and no one felt like interfering. "She gets left behind?"

"Not possible. She'll be in there. She just won't be driving the bus."

Buffy's face betrayed her disgust. "So she'll be like watching this... whoever do stuff with her body, but she won't have any control over it?"

"Pretty much."

"And that's why she's gone to this higher plane?" Angel was obviously almost as frustrated by the barrier separating him and Skip as the other demon. "So that some... some what? can hijack her body?"

"Are you telling me you thought it was because she was such a pure radiant saint? Right. And as to the what or the who that would be beyond your comprehension. To give it voice would render your feeble brain into a quivering mass-."

"Wes, get chanting."

"...Or you could call her a higher being. You seem to prefer to use the name A Power That Be... Or Is."

"Does this higher being have a name?" Lorne asked.

"No name."

"So what do you call it?" Angel quizzed the larger demon.

"Hey... or master."

Wesley eyed the grey demon, his curiosity evident. "There has to be more to it than this. Once it has control of Cordelia, then what? It doesn't just want to be Cordelia, does it?"

"Who would?"

"So what happens next?" Wes asked.

"This can't be right," Angel interrupted. "Cordy was made a higher being because she proved herself to The Powers. She had the visions and she chose to bear them, whatever the cost."

"Unless, as I seem to recall telling you, The Powers are motivated by self-interest," Wes clarified. "The visions were simply a ploy to bring things to this point."

"So all the time we were just being manipulated..." Fred sounded disappointed.

"Uh-huh." Skip laid on the sarcasm. "Better step on it. The rubes are catching up."

"To what end?" Wes took over the questioning again.

"So that Junior there can fulfil his destiny."

"Which is..."

"To be the father of earth's saviour."

"How'd we all jump from it bein' in Cordy to Connor bein' its daddy?" Fred asked before she noticed that Connor had turned bright red. "Oh! Oh!"

Angel took a bit longer to realise what Fred had figured out. "Don't be ridiculous. Cordy changed Connor's diapers. They wouldn't-." He turned to look at his embarrassed son.

"I might have. If I'd thought it was her. I mean if I'd thought she felt that way."

"Well, she doesn't. You're like her son... You would sleep with my girlfriend?"

Spike snorted. "You sleep with every bugger else's. And she ain't, not yet, an' if we don't do something, not ever. We need to figure this out, people. This thing, is it already inside her?"

"Like I said, my job was just to get her there."

"And this... bit of demon that she got before... that was a separate deal? Or was that just the first stage?"

"Kinda both."

Spike fixed the demon with an impatient glare, and to Skip's surprise began the invocation for the sphere spell from memory.

"Alright. She needed to be stronger than human for the second bit to work, but that first bit was just a physical thing, okay?"

"So, if we can get her back before this thing finishes its Exorcist routine then we still have 'our' Cordelia... if it hasn't already done it."

"Strength," Angel mused. "That's what this is all about. Creating a vessel strong enough to contain this thing. That's why it needs Connor."

Skip rolled his eyes. "Look out, the monkeys are thinking again."

"So," asked Spike,"Far as I recall, Jacob's ladder was a two-way street? Say we bring her back before this Power of yours is finished takin' over, how do we know whether what we've got is just the girl or whether there's something else there with her? I mean, if this thing's so... Power-ful, have we got any way of checkin' that it can't fool?"

"Well, there would be the Tarakeen Ritual of True Sight but since I doubt any of you could even read the thing even if you did get a hold of a copy..."

Wes gave a tight smile. "Let us worry about that."

"And if it isn't just her?" Spike asked. "How do we get rid of this thing?"

"Easy. Chop her head off."

Angel glowered at the other demon. "There has to be another way."

"Sure. Stab her in the heart, the kidney, couple of pokes in the lung."

"A way that won't kill Cordy in the process."

"It takes a whole lot of crammin' to get that much sweetness into a human. It's in every hair, every cell, every molecule of Cordelia's body and it ain't letting go until her and Oedipus make it a whole new bag."

Fred hesitated but she had to ask. "So just say, for the sake of argument that, well... that happened, what would happen to Cordy then?"

"Drained of her life force during labour. Those contractions are a real bitch."

"So even if it gets its new vessel, it'll still kill her?"

"Or she'll end up a head of cabbage."

"In that case, we better just hope we get her out of there before the Bigger Bad finishes worming its way inside." Spike exhaled a particularly long plume of smoke and turned to Wes. "Want me to ring your Tarakeen-talking assistant or would you rather do it yourself?"

Wes kept his eye on Skip as he gave Spike a gracious smile, noting the demon's bitter surprise. "Go ahead and call her. It's only just after one on a Sunday morning. I doubt she'll be in bed, yet. In the meantime, I'm sure Skip here would love to explain that Jacob's ladder spell."

"Right-oh! An', Angel, I think maybe now would be a good time to take your son off to one side an' explain the concept of safe sex... always assumin' that you understand it yourself."

 

---

 

"Why my body? Okay... it's a pretty good body, but really, lots like it. And, hey, first I heard about all this. Don't you think I would know if there was something else in here with me?" Cordy muttered under her breath. "Like you couldn't use Carmen Electra or somebody? Or Pamela Anderson? She needs someone else in charge to do her thinking for her."

The seer watched as Skip questioned her qualifications for the post of higher power. "Hey, I suffered. Not saying that I'm Mother Teresa or anything but I gave up fame and fortune so that Gloom Boy wouldn't end up raving and chained to the wall by Wesley, the one armed bandit... and those headaches... not fun. I darn well earned the right to be here... and I'll have you know that being me is pretty darn spiffy... most of the time... except for the suffering for-.

What? You have to be kidding me? Those visions nearly killed me and now Poindexter says it was all just a big con trick. And you couldn't have told anyone this two and a half years ago?"

Cordy's mouth fell open as she realised the next turn that the conversation was taking. "Yah, right, as if. I need toothpaste and carbolic just for thinking about it. It's practically incest. And what is it with men? For me to be your girlfriend, you would kinda hafta ask me out on a date, a real one... and pay for it... I'm not going through food poisoning again just so you get another free dinner. Too right, Bleach Boy, I'm not his...

Wait up, this thing sent me visions and deliberately added the mess of brain tumours that came with them so that I would become part demon, so that when it used my body to boff the son of the guy I'm actually in love with, the kid's body would be strong enough for it to possess it instead? And I bought it all?

Hang on, Skip To My Lou. Less with the chopping and the stabbing and the poking. There's got to be another way to deal with this...

Ah crap!"

 

---

 

"Watcher's Little Helper says she might have a copy... if she transcribed it into one of her notebooks before she threw away the original. If not, she's gonna get in touch with some folks as might. Either way, when she tracks down a copy she'll ring the hotel number, so she should get whoever is keeping watch on Cordy's fairy godmother, here." Spike nodded to Buffy as he strolled over to stand next to the reception desk. "'An' Pixie says hi, an' if she's not in when we get back not to worry. She's probably still over there."

"Why on earth would she throw out the original?" Wes asked, his expression one of total incomprehension.

"I think she said something about tomato soup... or cat barf or both. She was kinda vague."

Skip grinned. "And the fate of your world lies in those hands? Or at least the fate of Cordy. I think maybe you better sharpen up some axes." The demon tilted his head slightly to one side and added in a faux-light tone, "It's the only way to be sure."

Wes looked up from the notes he had made when he was talking to the demon. "Why don't you spare us the Aliens homage and answer this instead? Is there anything else that you're aware of that you would want to know if you were in our position?"

"Sure." Skip's gaze wandered to the blonde couple, who were no longer giving the conversation their full attention. "Demon spit's cleaner than human."






For the benefit of anyone who didn't notice already, the last couple of chapters have been largely based on the transcript of the AtS episode "Inside Out" with much of Skip's dialogue in particular being lifted directly from the show.